For this Triumph of Orthodoxy Sunday, the First in Lent, faithful of St. John’s in Winfield participated in a procession three times around the Church holding the icons of their patron saints. This was the first outdoor procession at the new Church. Below is the homily from the accompanying service. May the Lord give us good strength for the Fast!
Above: An icon of the author’s namesake saint, Alfred the Great. Born with the English name Alfred after the ninth-century warrior-king and scholar, he when converting to Orthodoxy didn’t realize that (at least in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia or ROCOR) Alfred is considered a saint. So he was baptized in a Greek Church with the names of the Apostle Paul (Pavlos) and the Holy Hierarch Kentigern Mungo of Glasgow (Pavlos so the Greek Bishop would recognize the name). Later, after joining ROCOR, he discovered that he had a “third” saint’s name related to his birth name and an icon too. As the Apostle Paul put it, how great a “cloud of witnesses” is with us to help in the Church. Glory to God!
The triumph of Orthodoxy we mark today involves, we pray, also our own victory and that of our families. If we had a family member complete a marathon, earn an Olympic medal, succeed in an amazing career goal, get married after being long alone, have a baby after having tried many times, how we would cheer at their triumph. How much so must we today cheer on one another in this first Sunday of Lent. For Lent means springtime, that is the meaning of the word. It is not mean to be a gloomy time but a celebration of our journey to Pascha. It is tough like any worthy achievement. But it is a way station on a marathon in which we must cheer one another on.
The Triumph we celebrate today lies in the iconography around us, of which we are a part, in our Church family. The heretics tried to take away the family portraits of the Church, which are also deep windows into another reality, another world of mystery, that is more real than our everyday life. They sought to erase the beauty of the Orthodox temple and replace it with the idolatry of their own minds. But, they could not, for God is with us. Many icons were sadly destroyed, but they ultimately were restored to the Church. They stand as reminders that our faith is embodied one, not an abstract love of true, but love in truth in personal and embodied ways. What is truth is not the right question to Orthodox Christians. It is Who is truth. The icons help answer that. They point to the Person of Jesus Christ, Who is the way, the truth, and the life.
In our Church, the traditional anathemas or condemnations against the heretics are read with a Bishop blessing and present on this day. However, in the parishes, we appropriately say after our procession a more pastoral Moleben, or prayer service, for those who have departed the Orthodox Church in error. We ask God’s mercy in His love for them, and for our errors and sins. Many have departed into error across centuries, and partly because of this, today our evangelizing work is cut out for us. Most of the so-called free Western countries departed from Orthodoxy long ago, leaving also misimpressions today about what Christianity is really about. The old lands of the Celts, the Germanic lands, the realms of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Vikings, and many others. These lands were once Orthodox, and so may they be again with help from the diaspora of the Russian Church in the past century. We see the convert wave today in Africa, and here in Appalachian America. May God speed the right!
The prayer at the end of our procession today asks: “O Most compassionate and all-powerful, be not angry to the end, O Lord! Be merciful, Thy Church prayeth Thee, setting before Thee the author and finisher of our salvation, Jesus Christ, be merciful to us, strengthen us in Thy right faith by Thy might, and unto those that are deceived do Thou enlighten the eyes of their reason by Thy divine light, that they may understand Thy truth: soften their bitterness and open their hearing, that they may know Thy voice and turn to Thee our Saviour…. make us all to live holy and undefiled, and so let the saving faith take root in our hearts and remain ever fruitful.”
As we carry our icons today in the procession around the outside of the Church, and then pray for mercy, may we keep on the procession of Orthodoxy of our forefathers in the faith across the centuries. Today, it is often technology that would erase iconography. It presents us with false idols of various kinds by which we worship the idol of ourself. Idols objectify, icons open up our hearts. But by building this temple, we have forced the issue with God’s help. We have made a great message on behalf of iconography. We have opened up our hearts to our spiritual family in the Church, and to our Lord Jesus Christ and His Mother, and the icons and relics that help us to relate to them in prayer.
(Above) Relic of the Head of the Forerunner John, in Amiens, France, where it was brought from Byzantium during the Crusades.
Appropriately on this Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, we also commemorate the first and second finding of the head of John the Baptist. For icons are related to relics as living memories of the holy saints who pray for us in the Church, such as the relic of St. John embedded in our entryway icon. Of the Forerunner John the Baptist, Our Lord and Savior tells us, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.” The fulfilment of the law and the prophets was announced by John, the last of the Old Testament prophets. And then, through the weapon of the Cross, would Jesus Christ win the victory by which we could obtain through His grace heaven. As St. Theophylact of Ohrid put it, “there is need of great force, for in order to leave father and mother and to despise one’s own life.” In the cause of Christ, we find a more abundant life, and an even deeper and larger sense of family.
The Greeks when they chant the Thrice-Holy Hymn in worship will exclaim Dynamis, meaning with force or power. Dynamis relates to energy, the uncreated energies of God, His grace, which is also the source of virtue. So too during Lent we need to force ourselves to fast within the same type of force we would use to save ourselves or a loved one if drowning, as we indeed easily can drown in worldliness and in the influences of the demons today. Jesus Christ reaches out his hand to us in the storm, as he did to the Apostle Peter in the Sea of Galilee. As we process and pray today, let us do so with dynamis, with force, with God’s help.
Our father among the saints Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) tells us in a homily for this day the source of this force we need as Orthodox Christians struggling for salvation, which is the Holy Spirit.
He wrote: “Orthodoxy is the glorification of God by man, the true servant of God, given to him through the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the glory of the Christian. Where there is no Spirit, there is no Orthodoxy…. The teaching of the Holy Spirit is a precious treasure! In it is the guarantee of our salvation. Our blessed portion in eternity is precious; nothing can take its place, and it is comparable to nothing. The teaching of the Holy Spirit is just as precious, just as high above all other values, and a guarantee of our blessedness. In order to preserve this guarantee for us, the holy Church recounts today for all to hear the teachings that were spawned and published by satan—teachings which are an expression of his enmity toward God, and which suggest slander concerning our salvation, robbing us of it. The Church rebukes these teachings as we would rebuke wolves seeking prey, deadly snakes, thieves, and murderers….”
St. Ignatius wrote, “The meaning of anathema is the meaning of the Church’s spiritual cure of an illness in the human soul, which causes eternal death. All human teachings cause eternal death if they introduce their own thinking drawn from reason falsely so-called, from carnal mindedness—that common heritage of fallen spirits and men—into the God-revealed teaching about God….Hearing today the dreadful pronouncement of spiritual cure, let us accept it with the true understanding of it; and pressing it to our souls, let us sincerely and decisively renounce those destructive teachings…
St. Ignatius continued with examples,
“To those who deny the existence of God, and assert that the world is self-existing, and that all things in it occur by chance, and not by the providence of God, Anathema.
“To those who say that God is not spirit, but flesh; or that He is not just, merciful, wise and all-knowing, and utter similar blasphemies, Anathema.
“To those who dare to say that the Son of God and also the Holy Spirit are not one in essence and of equal honor with the Father, and confess that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not one God, Anathema.
“To those who foolishly say that the coming of the Son of God into the world in the flesh, and His voluntary passion, death, and resurrection were not necessary for our salvation and the cleansing of sins, Anathema.
“To those who reject the grace of redemption preached by the Gospel as the only means of our justification before God, Anathema.
“To those who dare to say that the all-pure Virgin Mary was not virgin before giving birth, during birthgiving, and after her child-birth, Anathema.
“To those who do not believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets and apostles, and by them taught us the true way to eternal salvation, and confirmed this by miracles, and now dwells in the hearts of all true and faithful Christians, and teaches them in all truth, Anathema.
“To those who reject the immortality of the soul, the end of time, the future judgment, and eternal reward for virtue and condemnation for sin, Anathema.
“To those who reject all the holy mysteries [sacraments] held by the Church of Christ, Anathema.
“To those who reject the Councils of the holy fathers and their traditions, which are agreeable to divine revelation and kept piously by the Orthodox Catholic Church, Anathema.”
St. Ignatius concluded, “Divine Truth became incarnate to save through Himself us who have perished by accepting and adopting a murderous lie. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (Jn 8:31–32). Only he is faithful to the teachings of Christ who decisively renounces and ever rejects all those teachings once conceived and still being conceived by outcast spirits and lawless people, inimical to Christ’s teaching, to God’s teaching…. The integrity of the God-revealed teaching is preserved inviolable solely and exclusively in the bosom of the Eastern Orthodox Church.”
To his words let us add the pleas for mercy for the errors of ourselves and others in the special prayers today. We process in triumph today in Great Lent because of the struggle and triumph of our Lord’s Cross, our great standard in spiritual battle, leading us on to the Resurrection of Pascha. Glory to God for all things!